


Between Pain and Nothing

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:34:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My version of a S8 fix-it fic...in which nothing is fixed and lots of sex is had anyway. Title taken from the Faulkner quote.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Pain and Nothing

Benny and Dean fight like there’s an invisible chain connecting them, keeping them moving in tandem. Dean steps back, and Benny mirrors him to the left, both of them half-crouched and ready. Sam sees Dean’s fingers land on Benny’s sleeve – a signal maybe, or a reassurance.  
  
The attack comes from above, the branches creaking a split second before a new weight slams Sam to the ground. He scrapes his shoulder against a tree trunk as he goes down, machete up and straining against the fangs inches from his throat.  
  
Dean appears in a flash, knife cutting into the vampire’s neck with a wet thunk. Blood sprays into Sam’s eyes, and he instinctively flinches away. When he turns back, it’s to see Benny grappling with another unknown vampire. Dean makes it back to them just as they crash into the dirt. Another sharp swing, and the second head rolls unevenly along the ground.  
  
Sam lays back and tries to catch his breath.  
  
“Well, that’s pretty,” he hears Dean say.  
  
“I don’t think they liked us much,” Benny chuckles. There’s taut pain in under the light tone.  
  
“This might sting a little,” Dean says. Sam opens his eyes to see Dean unceremoniously yank a knife out from Benny’s shoulder. The blade gleams bright red in in the forest shadows.  
  
Benny hisses and grabs his shoulder. He scowls at Dean. “A little warning’d be nice.”  
  
Dean rises to his feet and pulls Benny with him, one smooth movement.  
  
“Sam?” Dean says. The shadows catch his face just the right way, cast half in darkness and half in painful clarity.  
  
“I’m good,” Sam says. He drags himself to his feet. His shoulder throbs where the rough bark ripped through cloth and skin.  
  
“Those were scouts,” Benny says. “When they don’t come back, the rest of the nest will come looking.”  
  
Dean wipes his blade against his jeans, smearing them with dark blood. “Better move, then.”

  
~~~~~

  
They disguise their scent the way Dad taught them, burning the mix of herbs and then banking the fire. Benny wrinkles his nose and moves away, as far from the scattered ashes as possible. His entire right shoulder is black with blood by the time they stop to rest, but it doesn’t seem to slow him down.  
  
Sam’s legs ache. A year away has left him unused to the constant motion of hunting. The cut on his shoulder stings, but Dean has been griping about the slow pace for hours. Sam’s not about to set himself up for another lecture by complaining.  
  
They don’t dare make a real fire. The nest they’ve been hunting is a transient one. They don’t know how far away the current camp is, where the next attack might come from, or how many numbers they’re dealing with.  
  
“Vagrants,” Benny tells them, a funny twist to his lips. “Most of us are, these days.”  
  
Us. In case Sam needed a reminder that they’re hunting vampires with one nestled in beside them.  
  
Sam had laid out his reservations about bringing Benny along, loudly and repeatedly. Dean had ignored them all.

“Hey,” Dean had said. “Who better than one of their own? He can get closer than we ever could. He can  _infiltrate_.” He’d rubbed his hands together with glee, and somehow all Sam’s objections got lost in clipped battle plans and brotherly slaps on the back.

Unfortunately, stories of Benny’s miraculous return had circled the vampire rumor mill long before the three of them had gotten close. They’d been chased out on first sight and had been running for hours since.  
  
Sam thinks of the Impala and hot coffee, worn plush chairs spotted with dog hair, Amelia’s curls and laughter in the dark and the sure warmth of another person against him.  
  
It’s midnight now on a Saturday, Sam thinks. She’s probably turning off the television, setting her empty wine glass down in the sink, padding into the bedroom. He can scarcely remember it, has to struggle to place himself in the picture. Just one year of reprieve in the fucked up merry-go-round of his life, but he misses it with an almost constant ache.  
  
Dean throws a granola bar his way, and Sam catches it. Benny is still twenty yards away, sharpening his machete and whistling absently. It’s a sinister combination.  
  
“Is he gonna join us or what?” Sam asks moodily.  
  
Dean’s lips quirk. “He’ll come when he’s ready. Let me see.” He peels Sam’s torn t-shirt away from his shoulder, and Sam curses. All the fragile knitting flesh tears open like tissue paper, shocking pain all the way down his body.  
  
“Damn it, careful.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Dean hums low in his throat as he studies the scrape. Sam tries not to stare down at his profile, the length of his lashes and the familiar slope of his cheekbones. It’s impossible not to take comfort in this ritual, this well-worn tradition of checking each other over. “You’ll live,” Dean says finally.  
  
“Yeah, thanks.” If Dean hears the sarcasm, he ignores it.  
  
“Hey.” Sam leans closer, lowers his voice. “He didn’t bring any blood bags. Is he gonna…I mean…”  
  
Dean raises his eyebrows. “First of all, he can hear you, genius. Second of all, he’ll be fine.” He raises his voice. “Right, buddy?”  
  
Benny doesn’t pause in his whistling, but he tips his head in assent. Sam’s starting to feel like the little kid left out of the secret club.  
  
They’ve been on this hunt two days, and Sam hasn’t seen Benny eat even once. No blood bags, no squirrels sucked dry, not even a flash of fang. If not for the dead look of his skin, the way his speech feels just short of modern, Sam wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from any other hunter on the planet.  
  
They’ve barely spoken to each other. Sam hasn’t tried to hide his distrust, has let Benny catch him staring more than once. Benny seems amused rather than angry, and Dean has done his level best to ignore the whole thing. Every time Benny calls Dean “brother” in that slow drawl, Sam’s guts coils tighter and tighter.  
  
“Five hours until sunrise,” Dean says. “I’ll take first watch.”

  
~~~~~

  
Sam’s not sure what wakes him. It’s not a nightmare. He knows that feeling all too well – the pounding heart, the clammy sweat. This is something else. An abrupt stillness that has Sam reaching for his knife before he’s even fully awake.  
  
Dean is gone.  
  
No, Dean  _and_  Benny are gone, sleeping rolls rumpled and empty.  
  
 _It’s probably nothing_ , Sam tells himself. Checking the perimeter. Going to fill the canteens. Moving away so they can reminisce about monster land without waking the little brother. A million plausible reasons they could have disappeared.  
  
But Sam can’t stop the flip-file of his brain, images like worn film. Dean with Benny’s fangs in his throat. Dean taken hostage to lure Sam out. Both of them gutted and dead. Too many bloody possibilities, and Sam’s seen them all.  
  
The deep indigo of the sky tells Sam he’s slept two hours, maybe three. They’ve left footprints, so at least they walked out on their own power. Sam sets out after their faint path.  
  
He sees them before he hears them. They’re so silent that the rest of the night noises seem magnified around them: crickets, rustling leaves, branches creaking. Dean is pinned to a tree, and Sam automatically reaches for his knife, nerves springing to the ready. It’s not a fight, though.  
  
Benny’s head is bent low, buried in the crook of Dean’s arm, mouth pushed against the soft skin there. Dean’s eyes are hazy with pleasure, drifting, mouth parted. Even in the dark Sam can see the obscene smear of blood streaking Dean’s bicep, the lazy way Benny is mouthing at Dean’s flesh.  
  
Sam wants to look away, but he’s rooted, caught. Benny is rolling his head back and forth slightly, like the pleasure is too much to hold still, and Dean’s hips are pushing lightly against the pillar of Benny’s thigh, thrust and relax, over and over.  
  
Sam feels like he’s walked in on a tryst, some parody of intimacy twisted and rolled up and turned inside out. The way Dean’s legs are shaking, Sam’s surprised he hasn’t slid right down to the ground, laid himself out like an offering. Sam can’t make his cheeks cool down, can’t stop the hardening of his own cock to see it – Dean lost in pleasure, feverish and sagging. Copper blooms on his tongue, a remembered wash of taste. His mouth on Ruby’s skin, thick hot blood on his tongue. He licks at his lips without meaning to, trying to reconcile the arousal with the sick fist in his stomach. Not okay that Dean has done this. Not okay that Dean has kept this from him.  
  
Benny notices him first, face turned briefly to the side, serene and satisfied. He stiffens when he sees Sam, head going up automatically. His lips and chin are soaked in Dean’s blood.  
  
Dean’s eyes catch his, and his whole face changes.  
  
“Sam,” he says hoarsely. Sam is already backing away, blindly putting space between himself and them.  
  
“Hold on,” Dean is saying, odd panic in his voice. “This isn’t – Sam!”  
  
Sam is gone, disappeared the way he came.

  
~~~~~

  
Dean is alone when Sam finds his way back to the campsite. It’s a good thing, too. Sam’s not sure what he would do if he saw Benny right now, but the thought of the vampire’s head rolling along the forest floor is a little too satisfying.  
  
Dean is seated on a log, sharpening his machete with slow, methodical strokes.  
  
“You know,” Dean says without looking up. “When you disappear in vamp-infested woods for two hours, I start thinking maybe something bad happened.” His voice is controlled, but Sam can hear the tension riding underneath.  
  
Fine with him. It’s one more thing to fuel his own anger, this storm of betrayal he’s been nursing for two hours straight.  
  
He lets the temper into his voice. “Sort of like when I wake up and you’re gone?”  
  
“Yeah, well you’d know all about creeping out in the middle of the night, huh Sammy?”  
  
Sam’s teeth click together. “What the  _hell_  happened to you down there?”  
  
Dean’s face is like stone. “It was a war zone, Sam. Sometimes he needed to feed. Sometimes I let him. We had to take care of each other. There wasn’t anyone else to do it.”  
  
It’s a subtle dig, and Sam bites down on his cheek to keep from yelling. “You’re not in a war zone anymore. You’re not the only thing on the menu. So give me one good reason to let him live.”  
  
Dean’s jaw tightens. “He needed the blood for his shoulder to heal. If he asked me, I’d do it again.”  
  
“You  _liked_  it,” Sam accuses. “I saw your face. You were  _enjoying_  it.”  
  
“And you wouldn’t know what that’s like, right?”  
  
Sam throws his knife down into the soft dirt – a brief burst of fury. “Shut the fuck up,” he says viciously. “Just shut up. That’s _done_ , and I’ve  _apologized_ , and I’m not gonna keep groveling forever.”  
  
Dean’s on his feet in an instant, eyes sparking. “You may have apologized, but you haven’t learned a damn thing. You turned your back on me then and you’re doing the same thing now. How can I tell you anything when I don’t trust you?”  
  
The cage has opened now, and Sam can feel ten year’s worth of resentment bubbling up in his throat. His hands are shaking with it. “You want to talk about trust?” he yells. “How about Amy? Or ditching me to become Michael’s vessel? Want to go further back? How about locking me in the panic room? Not telling me dad gave you  _orders to kill me_? You’ve _never_  trusted me, Dean. Ruby had nothing to do with it.”  
  
Dean is shaking his head. “Everything I did – ”  
  
“What? You did to protect me? Bullshit. You did it so you wouldn’t have to be alone, and you know it.”  
  
Dean jerks visibly. His mouth is tight and his fists are clenched, but Sam can’t bring himself to care. This is  _Dean’s fault_ ; Dean unleashed this whole ugly mess, and now he’ll have to deal with the consequences.  
  
Dean looks a way for a long moment. Sam can see the sporadic clenching of his jaw, the subtle way his hands are trembling. When he looks back his eyes are resolved.  
  
“If you feel that way, then maybe you should go.”  
  
Something cracks in Sam, sends a schism right up through his chest. Dean’s voice is flat, his face closed. Things have been hurtling toward this point for months, ever since Dean walked back into his life. There have been nights that Sam has wanted to yell or throw punches or pick up and walk away all over again. Still, hearing the words makes it a little hard to breathe.  
  
“Maybe I should,” he says, and tries to ignore the way his voice hitches.  
  
Dean nods and looks away again. “You were never gonna do this forever. It’s the one thing you never lied about.”  
  
Sam doesn’t trust himself to speak. He feels off-balance. He’s wanted out for months, but not like this.  
  
“It’s time for both of us to move on,” Dean is saying. “You said it. We want different things, right?”  
  
Sam remembers saying it; he just can’t remember exactly what he meant. He knows for certain that it wasn’t this – turning Dean over to Benny, fracturing their brotherhood beyond repair.  
  
Dean finally looks him in the eye again. “We finish the job. Then I’ll drop you wherever you want to go.”

  
~~~~~

  
They set out at noon, when the sun is at its highest. Benny doesn’t show his face again, for which Sam is thankful. According to Dean, he’s gone ahead to scout the next likely stopping point for the nest. Sam prefers to think that Benny is simply smart enough to stay away. He can’t remember the last time his hands itched so badly for a kill.  
  
He and Dean have never been particularly chatty, but now there’s dead silence between them. Dean’s face is pinched and focused, never wavering from the hunt. Sam wants to scream. He doesn’t know this Dean, this warrior who can keep the shattered pieces of their relationship so tightly roped off that the sharp edges never touch his expression. Sam wants Dean’s eyes on him, a craving fueled by a lifetime of habits.  
  
Dean moves forward steadily and doesn’t look back.  
  
Dean’s phone buzzes just as the sun’s light is starting to weaken. “It’s Benny with the coordinates,” he says. He poises his fingers to reply, and that’s when everything goes to hell.  
  
Sam feels the ground shift under his feet a second before a familiar snick sounds to his left. He tackles Dean instinctively, and they both slam to the ground just feet from the exploding trap.  
  
Sam hears Dean cursing under him, struggling for his gun. He can feel a hundred tiny scratches from the debris of the forest floor. There’s dirt in his eyes and splinters in his palms, and he’s having trouble breathing around the pain in his ribs. Something plows into the ground next to his head, sending up another shower of dead leaves and dirt. Gunfire.  
  
Dean scrambles to his feet, then yanks him up. “Ambush,” he says shortly. “We have to go.”  
  
Sam stumbles along after him, pulled by Dean’s fingers fisted in his shirt. They head for a dense cluster of trees not twenty feet away. Dean’s gun is drawn, eyes scanning the bare tree branches. Sam twists and tries to watch the other side without detaching himself from Dean.  
  
He’s too slow.  
  
The bullet slams Dean backwards, and Sam goes down again under Dean’s weight. He gets a shot off as he’s falling, and he sees a figure drop like a stone from the tree branches. Dean doesn’t move, and Sam can feel something sticky and warm against his arm. The vampire he shot struggles to his feet, the dead man’s blood on the bullet making him sluggish. Sam hurls his machete, and the blade decapitates the vamp in one clean slice.  
  
He wants to be done, but he knows he’s not. There’s never just one. He yanks Dean’s machete from its holster, dragging Dean by the collar to the tree cover. He doesn’t know if Dean is unconscious or just in shock from the pain, but he can’t stop to check. He waits, machete in one hand and gun in the other.  
  
The trees rustle minutely to his right. Sam backs up one step, then another, trying to get a better visual. The sound comes again. Sam keeps moving, pulling Dean along the ground.  
  
He can’t see it, but it can see him. He can tell by the prickle on the back of his neck. More than that – it can smell him, hear him, pinpoint him in a way he can never hope to match. He has no choice but to take his shot.  
  
He waits until he hears the rustle again. It’s moving to the left, in a circle around him. Sam aims his gun just to the side of where the tree branches shook, and he fires.  
  
The second vampire drops from the trees, clutching its shoulder. Its face is tense and wary, fangs showing. It’s looking with laser focus at Sam’s feet, and Sam realizes too late what’s happened. The thing was herding him; it’s another trap.  
  
Sam lets the machete fly just as his heel sinks. The ground gives under him, and then he’s falling, pulling Dean with him down into the blackness.

  
~~~~~

  
Sam comes to with his head on Dean’s stomach. He pushes himself up, skull pounding. Dean is still unconscious, his shoulder a mess of blood and dirt jagged flesh.  
  
Sam struggles to his knees, stomach churning. His head has that sloshy, concussed feel to it, and he realizes he must have hit it on the way down. There’s darkness all around them; they’re at lease ten feet down, surrounded by crumbling dirt walls on all sides. A freaking booby trap.  
  
He looks up and sees a perfect circle of starry sky above them. He’s been out for hours, which means Dean has been bleeding out slowly under him.  
  
Sam moves as quickly as his aching head will allow. The bullet is still in Dean, but Sam’s not about to attempt surgery without disinfectant. He cuts his own t-shirt into strips with his pocket knife instead and wraps the wound as tightly as possible. It won’t stave off infection, but it will at least slow the bleeding.  
  
Dean’s face is ashen, but his pulse is steady under Sam’s fingers. Not in shock. Not yet.  
  
Sam finds his own cell phone smashed to pieces in his front pocket. Dean’s is nowhere to be seen, and Sam can only assume he dropped it somewhere above ground.  
  
It’s been long enough for a second round of vampires to come and finish them off; the fact that they’re still alive tells Sam he managed to decapitate the second one on his way down. It’s maybe the one thing that’s gone right on this entire goddamn trip.  
  
He shifts Dean against him, letting his head roll against Sam’s shoulder. Sam can feel Dean’s slow breaths against his neck, a constant reassurance. It’s cold, and they have no food and no water, but Dean’s weight against him keeps the panic at bay.  
  
Sam dozes. He’s not sure how much time passes, but the sky is still dark when he feels Dean shift against him. Tension creeps into his body, and Sam knows he’s awake.  
  
“Benny?” is the first thing Dean says. Sam’s fingers tighten.  
  
“No,” he answers, calmer than he feels.  
  
“Sam.” Dean relaxes fractionally, but Sam’s not sure if it’s in relief or disappointment.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Dean braces his good arm against the ground and shifts away, leaving Sam’s right side cold. It’s a stupid thing, to begrudge Dean a few inches of space, but he does. Dean doesn’t  _want_  to lean on him. There’s no trust there – not anymore.  
  
“What the fuck happened?” Dean asks. His voice is thick with pain.  
  
“I don’t know – I passed out. I think it’s some kind of booby trap. And you got shot.”  
  
“I’m assuming you didn’t jump in here on purpose,” Dean says with a tired smirk. “Tell me you took out at least one of the bastards.”  
  
“Both. I think.”  
  
“Atta boy.”  
  
Sam grimaces. “Yeah, well…a lot of good it did us.”  
  
Dean prods at his shoulder, wincing. “Fuck. I can’t feel my arm.”  
  
“The bone’s probably shattered.”  
  
“Awesome. You hurt?”  
  
“Concussion. It’s fine.”  
  
“Good,” Dean says. “Because one of us has to crawl out of here and go for help.”  
  
“I’m not leaving you,” Sam says, clear and flat, and Dean’s lips press together in irritation.  
  
“You’d rather both of us die here?”  
  
“Those things can smell your blood. If I leave and they come back, you’re dead anyway.”  
  
“I’d rather go down fighting than bleed to death in a hole.”  
  
The moon is visible from their little prison, dimly glowing overhead. Sam stares up at it, throat sticking. He wants to shake Dean, put hands on him and just shake him open until he can be sure that Dean isn’t hiding anything else.  
  
“Well I wouldn’t,” Sam says, and Dean gives a little growl of frustration. Sam watches him, the familiar jut of his jaw, the way his tongue darts out to lick at his split lip. He’s Sam’s big brother, as painful and necessary as a rib ripped from Sam’s chest, and he’s a complete stranger. Even through a haze of pain, his eyes are hard and distant.  
  
“Benny will be looking for us. Let’s hope he finds us first.”  
  
“Before the  _other_  vampires, you mean?” Sam doesn’t bother to keep the scorn out of his voice.  
  
“You really wanna do this  _now_?”  
  
Sam ignores the question. “What I don’t get,” Sam says instead, “is why you didn’t tell me. What did you think I’d do?”  
  
Dean doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. His response is sharp. “Exactly what you did. Throw a tantrum.”  
  
“And?” Sam says, voice rising. “You  _crucified_  me when you found out about the demon blood. And now I’m supposed to just let this go?”  
  
“Yes,” Dean snaps. “You lost the high ground when you left me for dead. I did what I had to do to get out.”  
  
“I’ll bet,” Sam says, and then he’s moving without thinking, one hand braced by Dean’s head on the crumbling walls, the other pressing open fingers into Dean’s chest. “You’ve been hunting with him, and letting him drink from you, and probably fucking him for months.”  
  
Dean stares up at him, jaw hard. He wants to shove back, Sam can tell, but his good hand is busy keeping pressure on his wound.  
  
“At least I’ve been trying,” Dean says, every word bitten out. “You’ve been wanting out since the second I got back. Maybe you never wanted in in the first place.”  
  
Sam’s hand curls in Dean’s shirt, pulls and thumps him back against the wall in a burst of anger. Dean grunts in pain when his shoulder hits, slumps a little further down.  
  
“I won’t do this anymore,” Sam hisses. “You don’t trust me? Fine. But I won’t watch you hunt with some monster that’s as likely to rip your throat out as watch your back. You think I let you down? Well what about you? Trust is a fucking two way street, Dean. You want it on your terms, but all that’s ever gotten me is a dead brother and nothing to show for it. I can't…I won’t – You’ve died on me…so many times. I can’t live like this. I can’t – ”  
  
Dean’s curled fingers touch his face, clumsy and wet with blood, and Sam cuts off, choked.  
  
“Breathe,” Dean orders, and Sam realizes he’s dizzy. Something lets go in him, and he leans down and kisses Dean, blood and dirt and a thick wave of something unnamed between them. They haven’t touched each other like this since Dean came back, and the sensation is a painful relief.  
  
Dean’s good hand curls around his neck, tongue drawing him further in. Sam shudders and lets his weight sink down on his brother, the heated core of him and the cool limbs.  
  
He realizes he’s pressing up against Dean’s bad shoulder, but Dean doesn’t say a word. He lets Sam scrabble closer, lets him shove until Dean’s hair is dragging in the soft dirt wall. He’s horribly, instantly hard against Dean’s stomach, the smell of old leather and gun oil clinging to Dean’s skin even in this place.  
  
Dean’s neck is arched back, and Sam leans down and licks. He pulls Dean’s head to the side with a fistful of hair, and Dean is woozy enough to let him. He buries his face in the crook of Dean’s neck, the warmest part of him, and opens his mouth there. He can feel Dean’s pulse under his skin, pounding urgently. His heart is pumping too hard, pumping blood he can’t afford to lose, but Sam can’t stop.  
  
 _I’ll drop you wherever you want to go_ , Dean had said, and now Sam can feel the deadline like a gallows sentence. Dean’s hand curls in his jacket, and Sam hopes to hell this isn’t another big brother sacrifice, one last fuck to make Sammy happy. Because he can’t stop, and he can’t bear the idea that Dean is so far gone from him that he doesn’t want Sam back.  
  
“S’okay,” Dean is saying hoarsely above him. “C’mon Sammy. Do it.”  
  
Sam gets his hand on Dean’s belt, yanks it open without lifting his mouth from Dean’s neck. His tongue finds the pulse there and dances over it again and again. Dean’s hand is on him, too, not even bothering with the belt. The heel of his palm presses at just the right angle, and Sam groans. He circles his hips desperately, and everything falls into familiar territory. Grasping hands, tongues slick against skin, Dean’s hand on Sam’s back and Sam’s on Dean’s cheek. This is a hundred motel hand jobs, quick and casual or bitterly angry or fragile with relief. Everything’s changed, but this remains. They’re not gone from each other - they  _can’t_  be - not if they can still do this to each other.  
  
Sam finds what he’s looking for, Dean’s silky skin hidden beneath stiff layers. He jerks him in time to the sucking of his mouth, the fleshy sound echoing in their little prison. Dean starts to arch up against him, thrusting back. There’s no technique to the give and pull of their bodies, just a frantic seesawing. Sam tries to remember Dean’s shoulder, the blood spattered shirt and the bandage dark with blood. He wants to be careful, but his body is barely under his command anymore. He shoves Dean’s sleeve up to his forearm, revealing the mark that Benny left. Dean’s eyes flick to his, watching warily.  
  
It’s like a sickness; Sam wants to tear the cut open again, remake it so it’s his own, put his own mouth there if he has to, because otherwise he’ll never get rid of the image of Benny’s fangs in Dean’s skin. He presses there instead, punishing, and Dean inhales sharply. Blood wells up, and Sam smears it with his thumb.  
  
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t anymore.”  
  
Dean doesn’t answer him, breathing hard and open-mouthed. Sam puts fingers against Dean’s lips and strokes with his other hand.  
  
“Don’t,” he says again. His voice is strained, but he wonders if Dean can hear the plea underneath. Dean licks at Sam’s fingers, something new and purely sexual, and Sam comes in his jeans, blindingly intense.  
  
He doesn’t let up as he sinks against Dean, still stroking. Dean arches up and comes a second later, warmth coating Sam’s fingers. He feels Dean relaxing in increments, softening under Sam until his hand falls away.  
  
Sam lifts his head, and Dean’s eyes are closed, lashes a shadow against his cheek.  
  
“Dean,” he says softly. Dean doesn’t answer. Sam pulls away, and there’s blood  _everywhere_ , soaked through Dean’s bandage and onto Sam’s own shirt. Sam rears back in horror, one hand on Dean’s face. Dean’s unconscious again, slumped into the dirt.  
  
“Shit shit shit.” He tears open the bandage, brushing away cloth and blood. The wound is an angry red around the edges, irritated by the dirt and the rough handling. He re-bandages it, putting pressure there himself.  
  
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Dean, come on, stay with me.”  
  
Sam pulls Dean’s head into his lap, curling over him helplessly. Dean’s jeans are still open, and Sam tucks him back in, nauseous. The sweat cooling on his skin makes him shiver, and he watches as goose bumps rise on Dean’s arms.  
  
He slides down in the dirt and wraps himself around Dean, arms under his bunched up shirt and nose in his cold neck, a brother-blanket of much needed body heat. He realizes he’s breathing too fast, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He curls his fingers on Dean’s skin and makes himself match Dean breath for breath.  
  
Sam hasn’t prayed in centuries, but he comes close now.  _Benny_ , he thinks.  _Now would be a good time to prove me wrong._

  
~~~~~

  
Dean opens his eyes again just as the moon starts to wane. His gaze is scattered and feverish, and he says Sam’s name first this time.  
  
“I’m here.”  
  
“Not Purgatory anymore.” Dean’s voice is thick and stumbling, slurred from blood loss.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Not Hell either. Not if you’re here.”  
  
“No. Just…reality.”  
  
“Fuck me,” Dean says, and Sam, unbelievably, wants to laugh. He’s cold and exhausted and he feels a little drunk, like maybe they’ve just stumbled back from a bar instead of fallen into a ten-foot pit.  
  
“Am I crazy? Or did we jack off in a dirt hole?”  
  
“Yes. To both.”  
  
“Fuckin’ pain in the ass.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“How bad?” Dean asks.  
  
“The usual. Death’s door, just about.”  
  
“Awesome,” Dean says.  
  
“Hey, Dean…”  
  
“Apologize and I’ll kick your ass.”  
  
Sam has a crazy urge to cry. “Yeah, okay.” They breathe together, and Sam watches Dean’s eyes close again, heavy with exhaustion. He feels Dean relax against him again, slipping deeper and deeper into sleep.  
  
Sam tracks the moon’s progress and tries to shiver himself warm. It’s cold enough for Sam to see his breath. He watches the bleeding in Dean’s shoulder slow to a sluggish crawl. He doesn’t like the way Dean’s breathing now, shallow and uneven and labored. His pulse is erratic, and much weaker. He’s going into shock, and Sam can’t do anything to stop it.  
  
He could leave, he thinks. He could maybe claw himself out with his knife and some luck and try to get help, but then… The vampires could come back. He could lose his way again. Dean could die anyway, alone and without Sam there. Sam has this half-delirious certainty that if he keeps his hands on Dean, Dean will keep breathing.  
  
He puts one hand on Dean’s neck, reassuring himself with the thump of Dean’s pulse. He lets the other one rest on Dean’s chest, the sticky stiff texture of his shirt and the jerky expansion of his ribcage.  
  
The hell of it is, it was supposed to be done. The worst was supposed to have already happened. Dean had been gone and Sam had been alone and he had found a way to live with that emptiness, even to fill it up a bit.  
  
And yet here he is all over again, his missing puzzle piece shoved jagged and half-healed back into his chest. It might be ripped away again, and Sam isn’t sure he’ll survive it again.

  
~~~~~

  
Sam jerks awake to the sound of Dean’s name. He’s numb from cold, and his fingers are shaking as they reach for Dean’s pulse. It’s there, thread and faint. The sky above them has a gray tinge, and he realizes it’s morning.  
  
There’s a voice shouting in the distance, echoing over the top of the hole. Sam reaches for his knife, because it could be reinforcements coming to finish them off. He probably couldn’t fight off a possessed kitten in this condition, but he’s not about to roll over and give up, either.  
  
“Dean!” The southern twist to Dean’s name has never been so welcome.  
  
“Hey!” Sam shouts back. His throat feels like a raw scrape. “We’re down here!”  
  
Long minutes, and then Benny’s round face appears over the top of the hole. “Well well well,” Benny says. “You two takin’ a nap down there?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Sam says, hearty with relief. “Get us out.”  
  
Dean is sunk deep into unconsciousness, but between Sam’s height and Benny’s strength they manage to lift him out without opening his wound again. Sam springs up to grab Benny’s forearm, and Benny easily hauls him out.  
  
The two beheaded vampires are still on the ground where Sam left them, still and grey in the dawn light.  
  
“You cleaned out the rest of the nest?” Sam asks. His voice sounds rusty.  
  
“Yeah,” Benny says distractedly. His eyes flick over Dean. “Jesus. What the hell happened to him?”  
  
All the blood must be tempting, but Benny doesn’t even move to touch it, just gingerly peels away Dean’s bandage. The job is done, Sam realizes. His time is up.  
  
“Shot,” Sam says, swallowing. “He’s bled a lot. You’ve got to get him to the hospital before – ”  
  
Benny looks up at the lightening sky. “You kiddin’ me? It’s past my bed time. And me and hospitals don’t mix. All that human blood…” He shivers a little.  
  
“You  _have_  to,” Sam says frantically. “Job’s done. You have to take him.”  
  
“Sam…”  
  
Sam takes a steadying breath. Vampire or not, Benny came for them. He could have left them to die, but he didn’t. Maybe Dean’s been right the whole time. Maybe Sam just has shitty judgment, or maybe Sam has been too jealous to see what’s in front of his face.  
  
“He trusts you, right?” Sam asks. Benny nods again, wary this time.  
  
“Then you can’t let him die. He told me you’d take care of him, so don’t…don’t prove him wrong.”  
  
Benny’s eyes are narrowed, but he concedes with a brief nod. “You’re not…”  
  
“I’m not coming. I can’t.”  
  
Sam pushes his hair back with two hands, grabbing onto the strands to keep himself from shaking. “There’s a hospital less than fifty miles out of the woods. Ask for Dr. Millner. She’s seen us before. She knows what we are.”  
  
Benny’s studying him. “And how, exactly, are you planning to get out of the county without a car?”  
  
“Don’t worry about me. Look…you’re wasting daylight.”  
  
Sam fishes the keys to the Impala out of Dean’s pocket and tosses them to Benny. Dean looks even worse in the light, grey beneath his tan. His bandage is soaked through again.  
  
“Don’t crash it,” Sam says. “And don’t fuck up.”  
  
Benny still doesn’t look convinced. “What am I supposed to tell him when he wakes up and you’re not there?”  
  
Sam swallows. “Tell him the job’s done. And he knows where I’ll be.”

  
~~~~~

  
It takes him three days to hitch back to Texas. He runs out of cash in New Mexico and has to stop and hustle pool. His opponent catches on and nearly bashes his face in, and Sam ends up hiding from a miniature lynch mob at three in the morning. He’s used to tag-teaming; alone, he feels vulnerable.  
  
Amelia hasn’t changed the locks, and she freezes when Sam pushes the door open. Then she throws her porcelain teapot at his head. It shatters against the wall, tea and all.  
  
“What the  _fuck_  are you doing here?” she asks, tears in her voice.  
  
Riot is more welcoming. He whines and presses his nose into Sam’s palm, and Sam watches Amelia swallow.  
  
“Traitor,” she says to the dog.  
  
“I was hoping for a  _little_  less violence,” Sam says, trying for a smile.  
  
“Doesn’t your brother need you, or something?” she asks. She’s trying to sound bitchy, but her red cheeks are a dead giveaway. Sam hadn’t told her much, only that his brother had come back – somehow Dean had come  _back_  – and that he had to go. That time, she’d thrown a lamp.  
  
“He did,” Sam says simply. “He doesn’t anymore.” It hurts a little to say it out loud, but he keeps his gaze steady and open.  
  
She bites down on her lip. “So, what? You think you can just come back here whenever you want? I threw out your stuff, you know.”  
  
Sam’s smile feels as worn out as the rest of him. “I don’t need stuff.”  
  
“Then why are you here?”  
  
Sam says the only truthful thing he can. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  
~~~~~

  
She lets him sleep on the couch, and every night he hears the click of her bedroom lock turning. He gets a job at the only bar in town and tries to at least pay his share of the rent.  
  
After two weeks of tense cohabitation, she stops locking her door. Sometime during week three, Riot starts joining him at night, and then one Tuesday evening four weeks in Amelia pulls him through the bedroom door.  
  
“It’s only because I feel sorry for you,” she says. “It’s getting pathetic.”  
  
She’s changed the sheets and the replaced the lamp she threw at his head, but everything else is the same.  
  
Everything, except a single text message from Benny, sitting unanswered on Sam’s phone. It’s been there for a month and change, sitting heavier in his stomach every day.  
  
 _Awake and cranky as hell. Wants to see you._  
  
Sam composes about fifty replies and dials Dean’s number at least a dozen times. Every time, he loses his nerve.  
  
Dean’s phone isn’t hard to trace. Benny is surprisingly savvy about technology for a guy who’s been dead fifty years, but Sam gets a lock on his GPS anyway. He tracks them out of Montana and across to California, back to the middle of the country and up to North Dakota. They hit Massachusetts and start making their way down the Eastern seaboard. Sam follows it like an obsession. He wakes up in the morning, takes Riot for a walk, makes coffee, and checks on Dean.  
  
He doesn’t tell Amelia anything else, and she doesn’t ask, but he has an itch all the time. Everything is the same, except that Dean is alive now. Dean is in the world and hunting without Sam, and that changes everything. The blinking blue dot on the computer screen isn’t him, it isn’t  _Dean_ , but the sight of it moving settles Sam’s nerves in a way he can’t explain.  
  
He makes a list of things in his head that Benny doesn’t know about Dean: the fact that Dean tells everyone he lost his virginity at 13 when it was really 16, the way Dean practiced for hours every day to get his left-hand aim as good as his right, the heady strawberry-smoke-vodka taste of Dean’s mouth the first time Sam kissed him, horny and desperate and confused.  
  
He doesn’t know why any of that matters, only that it does. Dean expects his partner to know it, expects his partner to give _everything_ , and no one fits that description better than Sam.

  
~~~~~

  
Sam hunts exactly once after he leaves Dean. The county newspaper starts running articles about kidnapped children two towns over, and alarm bells go off in Sam’s head.  
  
He got in the habit of ignoring his instincts during his year off, but it’s harder to do now. Dean is still out there, and Sam can’t shake the image of his face, set in harsh lines of disapproval. Sam’s never been able to ignore that particular brand of shame. It itches up his spine all the time, until he finally gives in and goes to investigate.  
  
It’s a vengeful spirit, taking children in retribution for her own son being murdered. Sam doesn’t manage to save the first three, but he gets there in time to rescue the fourth – little girl with pigtails and freckles.  
  
He’s limping and bloody when he finally makes it home, and Amelia’s hands shake as she cleans him up.  
  
“Mugging?” she asks in disbelief. “In Kermit?”  
  
Sam shrugs. “I guess I look like an easy mark,” he says, offering what he hopes is a reassuring smile.  
  
She doesn’t look convinced, and Sam feels a little sick at the fear in her eyes. It reminds him too much of his younger self, patching up Dad and Dean after a bad fight, knowing something terrible was happening to his family and being powerless to stop it.  
  
He doesn’t hunt again.  
  
The image of Dean’s frown stays with him, though, sometimes in his dreams and sometimes at his job and sometimes at night when he’s wrapped around Amelia. His last memory of Dean is one of blood and fear. He knows Dean survived, but that doesn’t stop the nightmares. Dean dying in front of him. Dean cursing him with his last breath.  
  
When the dreams are particularly bad, he gets up in the middle of the night and opens his computer. The GPS tracker is bright and reassuring in the dark room. Sam watches it coast along route 66, heart in his throat.  
  
Amelia finds him like that once. She doesn’t say anything, but Sam sees the little line between her eyebrows, concern and bafflement. He takes her hand and goes back to bed.

  
~~~~~

  
The blue dot blinks into Kermit, Texas on March 15. It’s cold for the South, and Sam is in boots and a sweater outside the post office when he sees it. The sleek black slide of the Impala stretches down the main road, and the young kid coming through the post office door whistles, impressed.  
  
Sam fumbles with his phone until he finds it: Dean’s GPS blinking in the center of town.  
  
He makes it approximately ten minutes before he turns his pickup toward his brother. He doesn’t even have to look up the address to know where Dean will go. It’s the same motel Sam chose when he first rolled into town, before he hit a dog and everything went through the looking glass.  
  
There’s no reason to think Dean will be there in the middle of the day, but he is. He is. The car is like a punch to the gut, shiny and powerful and steeped in Dean’s care. It’s hard not to run his fingers along the hood as he passes by, but he refrains. His hands are shaking and somehow, he knows Dean will know.  
  
 _This is not a concession_ , he tells himself.  _It’s not an apology or begging or stalking or an admission of anything or –_  
  
The door swings open and Dean is there, wariness in every line of his body.  
  
“Sammy,” he says. An acknowledgement, and nothing else. It’s been six months, and Dean looks impossibly good – tired and tense and frowning and welcome all the same.  
  
“Jesus,” Sam breathes without meaning to.  
  
Dean’s eyebrows fly up. “If you say so. Cas would call blasphemy, though.”  
  
“No,” Sam says. “I mean. You - You’re…what are you doing here?”  
  
Dean hesitates for a second. His hands hook into his back pockets, and Sam thinks he might be buying time. It’s impossible to fathom that Dean might be reeling from the sight of Sam as much as Sam is from the sight of Dean. Everything around him is moving too quickly.  
  
“Haunting,” Dean says finally, eyes flicking away. “Historic church in the north corner of town. You know it?”  
  
“Do I know…?” And then the words click. “Haunting,” he says flatly. “You’re here on a hunt.”  
  
Another eyebrow raise, this time calculated and slow. “Well, yeah Sammy. It’s kinda this hobby I have.”  
  
“God, shut up,” Sam says viciously. “Just. I thought you were…” There’s no dam for the sudden pressure drop in his stomach, the hollowed-out feeling that washes right through him.  
  
Dean’s face shuts down. Sam can see the way tension creeps into the curl of his fingers.  
  
“Nevermind,” Sam says bitterly. “I just…I’m glad you’re okay. I’ll see you, I guess.”  
  
He turns to go, and he catches the minute shift of Dean’s weight behind him, the sudden jerk of Dean’s hands.  
  
“Hey,” Dean says, and Sam stops. “Do you want to…I don’t know. Have a drink, or something?”

  
~~~~~

  
There are two beds in the motel room, but only one duffel.  
  
Sam seats himself at the round window table, beer bottle leaking condensation between his fingers.  
  
“So,” Sam says. “I’m guessing Benny’s…around?”  
  
They’re being ridiculously careful of each other, so stupid for two people who have called each other names and grossed each other out and fucked each other up in about every way possible.  
  
Dean clears his throat. “No, actually. He’s, uh…I’m doing this one alone.”  
  
Sam frowns. “I know it’s none of my business, but is that smart?”  
  
“You’re right,” Dean says, looking away. “It’s none of your business.”  
  
Sam sets his shoulders, takes a calming breath. “Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just saying – ”  
  
“Benny’s dead, okay?” Dean cuts him off. “So yeah, I’m doing this one alone.”  
  
Shit. Dean’s jaw is tight, his foot tapping a tattoo on the scuffed wood floor. He looks about thirty seconds from bolting, and that’s the last thing Sam wants. The thought of Dean leaving again, leaving them fractured like this, is ridiculously painful.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sam manages after a second. “I know you and he were – ”  
  
“Yeah, well shit happens,” Dean says shortly. “Next topic.”  
  
And Sam  _knows_  he should drop it, but he’s never been very good at letting things go. Especially when it comes to Dean.  
  
“Wait. If Benny’s dead, why are you carrying around his cell phone?”  
  
Dean narrows his eyes, slow and suspicious. “How the hell do you know that?”  
  
Sam barely hears him. “How long has it been?” he demands. “Have you been hunting on your own?”  
  
“What, you’re a stalker now?”  
  
“Just answer the question, Dean!”  
  
Dean shakes his head, an unpleasant smile on his face. “Three months.”  
  
Sam sits forward in his chair, beer forgotten. “Three…. _months_? What the hell is wrong with you? You couldn’t at least pick up the phone and let me know? What if you had gotten hurt again? Or killed? I never would have known. It might have been years before – ”  
  
“Hey!” Dean’s on his feet just as quickly, hand slammed down on the surface on the bureau. “The phone line goes both ways.”  
  
Sam’s mind flashes to that unanswered text, still sitting on his cell phone. He forces himself to sit back, put his hands up in surrender. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, you’re right. But think for one second how you’d feel if it were me.”  
  
Dean’s lips twist. “Not much chance of that, is there?” His voice is bitter, and Sam’s chest tightens. There’s too much between them, he sees suddenly. Too much anger and misunderstanding and tension to ever make it right. There’s no patching this one over; no amount of stiches will ever close this gap.  
  
He stands again, and Dean’s green eyes follow him. “This was a bad idea,” he says with effort. “I shouldn’t have come here.”  
  
“No shit,” Dean says, but Sam sees his knuckles whiten on the edge of the bureau.  
  
“Right.” Sam swallows. “I should get back, and you should get to…whatever.”  
  
Dean looks away. He nods once, a silent jerk of his head.  
  
“Just…” Sam stops, tries to collect the tangle of his thoughts. “Don’t be stubborn. Find someone to watch your back. Even if it’s Garth.”  
  
Dean is looking down at the scarred bureau.  
  
“Dean?”  
  
“Yeah. Fine.”  
  
Sam tells his legs to move to the door, but they don’t seem to want to work.  
  
“And I’m sorry about Benny,” he says. The lie is metallic on his tongue, but he needs to say something. He can’t keep staring at Dean like a moron.  
  
“I’ll bet.”  
  
“I am. I was wrong about him. He saved both of us. I don’t know what happened, but – ”  
  
“I cut his head off, all right? Happy?”  
  
Sam goes cold. “What?”  
  
“Turns out you were right. He couldn’t control it after all. Almost killed some kid outside of Louisiana.” Dean’s jaw is hard, but his eyes are dark with guilt.  
  
“Dean… I’m – ”  
  
“No you’re not.” Dean’s voice is like ice. “You never trusted him, so shut the fuck up about it.”  
  
It hits him suddenly; Dean hasn’t just been hunting alone. He’s been  _grieving_. And Dean and grief are about the worst combination possible. Sam shudders just imagining all the ways Dean might have died in the last months, all the suicidal risks he must have taken.  
  
“I’m not lying.” Sam takes a step back toward Dean. “I’m not gonna pretend I liked him, but I didn’t want him dead.”  
  
Dean won’t look at him, and so Sam touches his arm. The familiar feel of Dean’s shirt under his fingers is dizzying, the first gulp of air in months. “He was your friend,” Sam says, “and I’m sorry.”  
  
“Yeah, well. I’ve never had much luck keeping friends around.” Dean’s voice is very low.  
  
“Dean…”  
  
“Weren’t you leaving?”  
  
Sam tightens his fingers on Dean’s sleeve. He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not ready to send Dean back out to danger and drink and bloody fights with no one at all watching his back.  
  
“What?” Dean asks warily. Sam leans into him, and Dean jerks, startled. He puts his hand flat against Dean’s stomach, and he feels the muscles jump.  
  
“Not the  _fucking_  time, Sam,” Dean snaps. He shoves, but Sam plants his feet and doesn’t move.  
  
“Yes it is.” He opens his mouth against Dean’s neck and licks. Dean is furnace hot, stale from a day on the road and rough with stubble.  
  
Dean shoves again, harder, and Sam grabs on to his shirt. They both stumble a step.  
  
Dean’s voice is a warning rasp. “If you don’t get out of my way I’ll flatten you right here.”  
  
“No you won’t,” Sam murmurs. He’s not actually sure about that – Dean’s beat the shit out of him for less, and Sam can feel him practically vibrating. Maybe rage, maybe something else.  
  
He pushes up the back of Dean’s shirt and skims his hands against the warm skin underneath. Dean arches into him with a curse, and Sam can feel the hard press of him against his thigh.  
  
He doesn’t care in that moment if Dean trusts him, or if Dean thinks he’s a shitty brother, or if Dean wishes he were someone else. He only knows that Dean’s hurting, and Sam’s been drifting without an anchor for months, and that this brief comfort is worth the risk of fucking things up even more.  
  
“Let me,” Sam pleads, and he can’t tell who he’s doing it for anymore. He sinks to his knees in front of Dean and drops his forehead against Dean’s bare stomach, waiting. His heart is pounding in his throat, arousal and sadness and love twisting all together in a persistent ache.  
  
“You get off on death, or something?” Dean asks wearily.  
  
Sam gets off on Dean, and the ever-deepening rasp in Dean’s voice, and the particular scent of Dean’s skin, warm and rich and laced with gunpowder.  
  
Dean’s hand lands on the crown of Sam’s head, lightly tugging, and that’s all the encouragement Sam needs. Sam drags down the zipper to Dean’s fly and brushes his thumb against the cotton-covered bulge there. Dean inhales sharply, but doesn’t move to help. Sam sucks at the fabric, gets it good and wet, before dragging Dean’s jeans and boxers down in one smooth movement.  
  
Dean’s thighs shift open the slightest bit, and Sam feels him lean forward. His free hand braces against the wall, the other still buried in Sam’s hair. Sam licks him once, a sliding kiss down the length of his shaft, and then swallows the head. Sam can feel the way Dean’s cock fattens up in his mouth, the way Dean goes from half-hard to fully erect within seconds. They’re conditioned to want each other, Sam thinks. He doesn’t know whether to blame Dean or Dad or fate or just years of isolation and grief and devotion so strong it makes Sam shiver. Dean is as helpless against it as he is, and the thought both terrifies Sam and makes him fiercely glad.  
  
Dean is bitter and musky on Sam’s tongue, and Sam imagines he can taste all the tears and blood and alcohol of the last months there. Dean’s length slides easily down his throat – years of practice – and he’s hot like a brand inside of Sam. He rocks gently, not enough to make Sam gag, and Sam hooks two hands around the back of his legs. He feels the warning hitch of Dean’s breath, the way his thighs clench suddenly, and then Dean comes, moaning.  
  
Sam swallows it, sucking gently against the sensitive skin. He lets Dean’s dick slide from his mouth after a moment, soft and glistening with saliva. Dean is trying not to pant, but his face is flushed, lips parted. His eyes are dilated and lust-bright. He looks ridiculously decadent, and Sam wants to pin him to the bed and fuck him for hours.  
  
Sam shucks his shirt, and Dean kicks his jeans off the rest of the way. Sam braces himself when Dean’s shirt comes off. He doesn’t want to see Benny’s mark, Benny’s scars, all over Dean’s body. Dean’s torso and arms are clean, though, no scar Sam can’t account for.  
  
Dean sees him looking and seems to read his mind.  
  
“You said stop,” Dean says. “So I did.” His lips quirk – a self-deprecating smirk – and something twists in Sam’s stomach.  
  
“Good,” he says.  
  
Sam holds them face to face, doesn’t let Dean turn over or pull the ratty sheets up around them. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and Sam can see everything in the sunlight filtering through the blinds. All of Dean’s scars are visible, every freckle and scab and line carved into Dean’s body. They’ve done this a million different ways – brutal and gentle and frenzied and slow – but Dean has never held so still for Sam before, let him scrape teeth and lips and tongue over every inch of him.  
  
Sam feels like he’s been kept away from sunlight for  _months_  and now he’s getting his first glimpse. The tightness in his chest – the one he didn’t realize he was carrying around – unknots a little more with every thrust.  
  
 _I missed you, you dick_ , is what he wants to say, but Dean will never let him. He’ll get ignored at best, punched at worst. He presses blunt teeth against Dean’s jaw instead, a hard little nip. Dean will bruise, and Sam will stare at it for  _days_ , sickly fascinated. Dean’s fingers claw into his sides, a sudden pressure, and Sam comes, grey sweeping his vision.  
  
They lay there for a long time, breaths deepening and sweat drying on their skin.  
  


~~~~~

  
Sam sleeps, face pressed into Dean’s neck and arm slung around his hips. When he wakes he’s chilled and sticky and Dean is trailing fingers over his back in a slow, lulling motion.  
  
Dean’s breathing doesn’t change, but he must feel Sam wake against him.  
  
“He begged me to do it,” Dean says. There are cobwebs in his voice, dusty and muted. “He almost drained a little kid on a hunt. He couldn’t live with himself.”  
  
Sam closes his eyes again. “You had no choice.”  
  
There’s a long pause before Dean says, “Yeah.”  
  
“I want back in,” Sam murmurs. Dean’s fingers stop their repetitive sweep.  
  
“No, you don’t,” he says. His voice is very tired.  
  
“I’m serious. You’re not going back out there alone.”  
  
Dean resumes his stroking up under Sam’s hair, rubbing his scalp like a dog. Sam can’t see his expression, but he can almost picture the rueful smile.  
  
“Nah,” Dean says. “You’ve got a life now. I’m not taking that away again.”  
  
“You never took anything away. I know I said some things, but – ”  
  
“I’ll be fine. I’ve still got Cas. And Garth, whatever that’s worth.”  
  
“You’re not listening to me.”  
  
“That’s because you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s the orgasm talking.”  
  
“You’re good, but you’re not that good.”  
  
“You keep telling yourself that, Sammy.”  
  
There are too many things crowded in Sam’s head for them to come out in any kind of order. He thinks of the blue dot endlessly moving on the map, of sleepless nights and Amelia’s worried frown and the way the sight of the Impala filled him to the brim, light and painful all at once. He’s not sure how to get it all out properly, and he doubts Dean would stay still long enough to listen.  
  
“Don’t be an asshole,” he says finally. “I’m staying.” The stubbornness is an old fallback; it’s never failed him before.  
  
Dean sighs, chest expanding under Sam’s arm. “And what about your girl? You just gonna ditch her again?”  
  
“She’ll survive,” Sam says, and he’s pretty sure he’s lying. He thinks Amelia’s happiness should be more important to him than having Dean by his side, but somewhere along the line, his wires got crossed. Brother trumps girl; safety trumps stability; misery trumps happiness, as long he and Dean are within arm’s reach of each other.  
  
There’s a deeper, darker part of him that thinks it might not be about safety at all. There’s something inside of him that doesn’t function without Dean’s love. Maybe Dean dead is better than Dean hating him; maybe Dean’s support really is all that’s keeping him together anymore. Take that away, and he’s crippled.  
  
“How long do you need?” Dean asks, and Sam knows he’s won.  
  
“Few hours. Gotta go back and grab some stuff.” Dean’s mouth twitches, and Sam pinches him. “And don’t think you can leave without me.”  
  
Dean turns on his side so that Sam can finally see his face. His eyes are bleak. “It’s not gonna work. You’ll remember you hate hunting, and you’ll blame me all over again. Get out while you can. ‘Cause I can’t promise I’ll let you go again.”  
  
Sam puts one hand on Dean’s neck, the warm curve where it slopes into bare shoulder. “Maybe,” he says. “And maybe you’ll be a dick and die on me again. What other choice do we have?”

  
~~~~~

  
They pull over the Oklahoma state border at four ‘o clock the next afternoon. Sam has a bruise blossoming on his cheek from where Amelia slapped him. Judging from the way she’d reeled back afterward, Sam can guess that she’s never raised a hand to anyone before.  
  
“Don’t ever come back here,” she’d said, and this time Sam knows he never will.  
  
“Was there really a case in Kermit?” he asks.  
  
Dean purses his lips. “There could have been…” he hedges.  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Old churches always have ghosts.”  
  
“Did this one?”  
  
“…Probably not.”  
  
Sam shakes his head, torn between frustration and affection. Dean’s face is dipped in orange sunlight, his lips moving a little as he sings along to the radio.  
  
“East or west?” he asks when they hit I-40.  
  
“Does it matter?”  
  
“East is wendigo, west is revenant. You in the mood for silver or flames?”  
  
Sam’s not in the mood for either, but he’s not ready to disturb this brief peace. Dean’s fingers, blunt and strong, are tapping a beat on Sam’s thigh.  
  
“You choose,” he says. “I’m good.”


End file.
